The word ‘landing page’ is thrown around a lot in the internet marketing world. While it may seem like an easy concept to most in the industry, for those on the outside, it may just be another confusing term in this crazy internet world.

To be able to explain what a ‘landing page’ is, it’s useful go go even more basic and explain what a webpage is. Websites are very similar to magazines, newspapers, or books, in the way that they’re made up of several ‘pages’. The most popular form of this ‘page’ is the Homepage, meaning the center, or ‘front door’ to a website. For example, www.motoza.com is the homepage to our website. Any other section on the website is simply another ‘page’ inside the site. For example, if you were to imagine a website as a home, and you’re looking at a floorplan of the website, the ‘homepage’ would be the entrance/foyer, and other pages would be the living room, kitchen, laundry room, etc etc.

Each ‘page’ serves a specific purpose, whether it’s a contact page, an about page, a blog page, or a services page.

A ‘landing page’ is simply any page that can be used as an additional entrance to the website. It literally is a page, where a visitor can ‘land’ onto the website.

Technically, any page on your site, including your homepage, is a landing page. Someone could theoritcally go to your website by first visiting your ‘contact’ page, or your ‘about’ page. How well that page works in sparking interest in your visitors is what gauges how effective a landing page is.

A proper landing page is designed to be a main entry point to your website for a specific targeted audience.

The fact is, most homepages are terrible landing pages because they’re not designed for a specific audience and provide far too much distracting information. For example, most homepages will display all the links on the website, a mission statement, a news section, their product or service a long with a few testimonials.  However, if that website provides more than one service, people looking for a specific service may not find what they’re looking for and leave very quickly. Since it would be very difficult to design a homepage that caters to all services and their intended audience, it’s best to create separate landing pages for each service or offer you have.

A proper landing page should be very simple and have as little content as possible to gain the visitors attention. Studies show that the average web visitor spends around 5 seconds deciding whether he or she wants to continue on a website, so it’s important to capitalize on those few seconds by making your offering very clear.

If you design a landing page with a clear heading explaining the service/product/offer, have clear easy-to-follow bullet points, and a strong call-to-action (phone number, email submit, ‘buy now’ button) then you have a better chance or gaining that person’s interest.

A proper landing page will strip the page of any elements that do not contribute to the main goal of the page. Whether the landing page is geared towards having someone sign up to a newsletter, call about a product, or sign up for a promotion, everything on the page MUST push the visitor to keep going.

Landing pages are usually promoted through paid advertisements in areas where the traffic is likely to be very targeted. They should never be used as a way of capturing as much traffic as possible, instead they’re used to capture fewer, more qualified leads.

Take some time to look at your homepage, services and promotions. Decide which services are most popular with your clients, and develop landing pages highlighting the benefits and call-to-actions tailored for that targeted audience.

We could all talk about how to triple the number of visitors through various online marketing sources or sending out more emails to prospects, but the best way to increase the number of conversions for your services or products is by providing tons of value. There’s nothing wrong with having thousands of visitors running across your website every day, but it’s how you optimize their experiences that make it worth your while. Many make the mistake of primarily focusing on driving boatloads of traffic and hoping a percentage take a particular action, whether it is a sale or an email opt-in. Sure, that will probably make you a quick buck, but you’re probably going to have to repeatedly find new prospects.

So what is the best way to maximize your online conversions?

Easy. Create a relationship with them and nurture them. Don’t consider your prospects as customers, but more as friends you want to help. If you think of it that way, you’re more likely to say “Hey, here’s a bunch of stuff you should check out, I think it will help you or your business and if you like it, send me some more money to help me out and I’ll make it worth your while” instead of shoving a bunch of stuff down their throats and hoping one will take the “bait”.

It takes a lot more work to develop and grow these relationships, but in the long run, you’ll be much more successful in your campaigns and your audience will put their trust in you. They won’t feel you are trying to scam them or use them. With their trust, you can continue to provide them with value and they will know whatever you deliver to them, it will be phenomenal and they can’t wait to get their hands on it.

So even if your prospects are online instead of in person or over the phone, make that effort because it’ll be a breath of fresh air to find someone online who actually wants to help.

Imagine a shopkeeper opened up food market, and spent a fortune on a nice marketing campaign and a great looking storefront sign. That sounds great! However, what if the shopkeeper never takes the time to ask people in the store “how was your shopping experience?” What if he never changes the look of an aisle, or rearranges the products to better fit consumer needs?

The assumption is that his store, or in your case, your site, is working. By not testing, or asking your customers how they feel, you’ll never really know whether your website is truly doing the best for you that it can.

A few years ago, developers avoided A/B testing due to price and resources needed. It was too expensive to hire a usability company to host focus groups and gather customer information. Doing the work yourself would mean hours and hours of research. That’s the past, and things are different. Regardless of the size of your budget, you can perform valuable testing on your website and optimize for online success rate with much lower cost and time. Over the past few years, numerous tools have risen that provide webmasters with a vast amount of information that once cost a small fortune to obtain. These tools include:

Google Analytics is a free user tracking tool that will give you valuable insight on how people navigate your site. It tracks what pages they visit, how long they stay on each page, and even whether they achieved one of your desired goals (ex. Purchase an item, or sign up for a newsletter). Google Analytics acts like a surveillance camera at a store, tracking what everyone is doing. By simply installing a small snippet of code on each page of your site, you can begin tracking today for free.

Woopra Analytics is a relatively inexpensive service that gives you further insight to how people are navigating your website. This service allows you to visually track visitor actions in real time. It serves as a supercharged version of Google Analytics by providing you information as visitors are on your site. In addition, it allows you to live chat with visitors, in order to gain further insight by communicating with your potential clients.

Google Website Optimizer is another great free tool that lets you create A/B tests on your website. Simply install a snippet of code around a section of your website you want to ‘test’, and you can show visitors different variations of that section and then see which works best in achieving your goal. The tool uses statistical algorithms and tracking code to give you the best variation to use. You can test individual sections of your site (ex. your header) or entire pages.

For more information about these products, and how we use them to achieve success for our clients, contact Motoza Marketing or call us toll-free at 1-855-9-MOTOZA.